


Why Mr. Spock, you almost make me believe in miracles

by Wingittofreedom



Category: Star Trek, Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Angst and Humor, Elegy, First Time, Flirting, M/M, Pining Spock, Romance, Spock's a virgin, low key written for English majors, occasional moments of crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-08-05 15:14:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 17,858
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16370045
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wingittofreedom/pseuds/Wingittofreedom
Summary: Jim and Spock struggle to make sense of each other after the destruction of Vulcan.It's angsty at first, but come on, we all know angst is but the fodder of love (and future smash sessions).





	1. In which Jim has sweaty hands and Spock thinks about ogres

**Author's Note:**

> In TOS there's an episode where, after a mission win, Spock leans over with come-hither eyes and says "Captain, you almost make me believe in luck," and Jim smiles and says "Why Mr. Spock, you almost make me believe in miracles." 
> 
> High key the most beautiful declarations of undying love in front of the whole bridge crew ever. AOS Jim and Spock should say those words to each other. 
> 
> This is my first story of any kind ever so please be gentle.

Sometimes just looking at Spock hurts. His immaculate uniform and perfect posture, the resolution in his eyes and the way his hair looks like it was cut with a ruler.

Spock looks like he comes from a different era. When everything was good and people were noble and decent: before war and insanity and the senseless destruction of Vulcan. Jim wonders how he can still look like that even after everything that's happened.

Of course Jim knows that 'a more decent time' never existed. The only people who can believe in idyllic pasts are those who _had_ idyllic pasts—read good childhoods—something that Jim certainly _didn't_. He knows "the good old days" are just one more kind of imaginary nostalgia; the fever dream of a postlapsarian world.

 _"There were giants on the Earth in those days,"_  it said somewhere in Genesis, butof course there never had been. 

That Jim _knows_ this, is perfectly aware that such things don't exits, is what makes it all the stranger that Spock has Jim, at age 27, almost believing in miracles. 

* * *

When Spock was a child, isolated by his Vulcan peers, he spent his time reading. He scoured ancient fairy tales from Earth and scrolls from pre-Surakian Vulcan detailing the adventures of brave warriors of noble heart and mind. Their quests became his quests and together they fought against monsters of injustice and evil, performing deeds of courage and renown. “All hail Spock, savior of Vulcan!” the crowds shouted in joyful adulation. And Spock would sleep better at night, having spent his meditation hour imagining victorious battles and valiant feats of arms.

It wasn’t long, however, before Spock realized that the evil ogres and skin-walker _le-matyas_ that he had conquered in his childish imaginings were actually simple psychological projections of the classmates who taunted him and whose rejection he was unable to vanquish in reality.

It was then that Spock stopped reading stories. Instead he read physics and chemistry textbooks and soon he had surpassed them all. 

When the _Enterprise_ limps back to Earth on impulse power, the crowds greet the disembarking crew with joyful adulation. As Spock sees Kirk smile and wave at the crowds he is reminded of the stories he used to read so long ago.

To the crowd, Kirk is Jack the Giant Slayer, Beowulf the warrior, or Odysseus, man of many twists and turns. Spock knows better of course. He was there to witness what cruel things heroes will do to achieve their ends, what Kirk was willing to say in order to win. For a moment he saw in Kirk a twisted mirror of Nero, the man whose epic love for his wife led him to justify genocide.

He sees now how foolish such love and bravery are when they lead their adherents to believe that the evil they do is good.

 _“All hail Spock, savior of nobody,”_ he thinks wryly.

It is then that he decides to leave Starfleet.

* * * 

Jim wipes his sweating hands on his pants and tries to remember why he’s here. 

He’s standing in front of Spock’s door at the Academy, trying to think out what to say for the thousandth time. What do you say to someone who you’ve insulted more deeply than anyone you ever have in your entire life (and that’s saying something), who lost his planet and then helped you save yours? 

Jim closes his eyes and raises his hand to knock. No amount of preparation is going to help him.

He’s done it. He’s knocked. He feels a bit sick as he watches the door slide open. Spock stands in the doorway, face impassive. 

“Hi Spock,” _Fuck, that was awful._  “Do you have a moment?” Jim asks, trying to keep his voice calm. Spock doesn’t say anything and for a long minute Jim is sure Spock's going to yell at him or hit him or (worse) say nothing. But then, with a small motion that is startling after the stillness, Spock gestures for him to come in.

The room is painfully clean of course. If this was a human’s living room Jim would know in a second they had OCD. Because Spock is half Vulcan does that mean he _doesn’t_ have OCD? Jim shakes his head as he silently sits on the couch. He doesn't need to ask—he knows the dude has issues; he almost choked him to death 72 hours ago. 

Spock sits opposite him on a chair (angled at precisely 180 degrees away, of course), waiting. Jim takes a breath, _don’t be nervous_  he thinks.

“Um,” _so much for that_. Spock raises an eyebrow. Strangely, that makes Jim feel a bit better. Spock is not going to break. He can do this.

His voice is much stronger when he speaks again and he looks Spock in his eyes. Somehow that’s important. 

“I came here to apologize for what I said on the bridge.” Jim breathes in once and keeps going. “I can’t imagine how you’re feeling right now but what I said was completely inexcusable even if it did end with us saving Earth. No one should have to hear those words and especially not right after what happened. The only reason I said what I said is because I _know_ you loved her and I knew hitting there would work.” Jim doesn’t need to try to perform sincerity as he says this, he believes every word; he saw the truth of it in Spock’s mind in the meld and in Spock's eyes when he snapped. “I don’t expect you to forgive me because I don’t think that’s possible,” (Jim actually knows it’s not possible.) “But I hope you can forgive yourself for reacting the way you did. I deserved it.”

Jim doesn’t know what he expects Spock to do, but when Spock does nothing he suddenly realizes that he _was_  hoping (desperately) to be forgiven by this man. Disgusted with himself he gets up quickly.  

“Anyway, thanks for your time,” he says as he walks towards the door.

“Wait.” It’s just one word but Jim’s entire world view seems to teeter as he turns around to look at Spock, who’s still seated in his perfectly angled chair with his 90 degree posture and resolute eyes. And Jim knows that he will never be as good a man as Spock, but this is too much. He can hear his heart beating in his ears and it hurts to look at Spock.

“I forgive you.” Spock says quietly. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first multi-chapter story—all responses are treasured and wept over.
> 
> You can check me out on tumblr [here](https://wingittofreedom.tumblr.com) (my blog is an alter to Kirk/Spock).


	2. In which Spock really wasn't joking and Jim's big mouth strikes again

Spock is in the gym overthinking his life choices as he flows through the familiar positions of the _Suus Mahna_.

Spock’s not exactly sure what to make of Kirk anymore. He sees his image so often now, on the screens that are _everywhere;_  so often that his face seems (illogically) to have become like a piece to a cosmic puzzle, and that if Spock could only understand how he feels about Kirk, maybe everything would make sense again. Maybe the logical order of the universe that Nero destroyed with Vulcan would reassert itself (and, maybe, most desperately of all, he would somehow see his mother again).

It would be simpler if he could hate Kirk. Hatred was simple and could be dealt with (would have been dealt with if the _Enterprise_ hadn't intercepted him mid collision course). But when he asks himself why his anger is gone, he’s not sure. He wonders if maybe it is simply because Kirk was so sure Spock loved his mother. Sure enough to risk Earth on it.

Spock never told his mother that he loved her. When he was a teenager, at the height of his Vulcan fanaticism, he even tried to convince himself (and, cruelly, her) that he felt nothing for her and never had. Kirk’s words, vicious as they had been, provided him with the irrefutable evidence that he did love her. His violent anger was proof enough.

Now that he has seen in Nero (and himself) what cruel things love makes people do, Spock isn’t sure he wants to love again. Kolinhar has never seemed so tempting.

Spock flows into the next set of forms, feeling sweat begin to bead at the back of his neck, on his forehead and under his arms.

Kirk had looked thrown after Spock’s declaration. He’d just stood there and Spock wondered if he would cry. But he’d just nodded sharply and turned to leave. But, being the capricious human that he was, Kirk had turned back and asked Spock, brow furrowed in real confusion and eyes still too full of something “Why are you forgiving me?”

Spock, with sudden clarity had replied “You are not Nero.” Because Kirk _wasn't_ Nero or an ogre or a skin-walking le-matya or the Vulcan children who had taunted Spock as a child. Kirk wasn’t a hero either, but he wasn’t evil.

“Well, thank you for being the bigger man, err Vulcan.” Kirk had said, suddenly light (and yet his eyes had not suggested lightness). “In your position I would totally push me under a bus,” he had said, grinning. 

Spock had surprised himself by raising an eyebrow and saying “I have not entirely ruled out the possibility.” Kirk’s eyes had widened in surprise and he had laughed ( _really don’t laugh Kirk, I actually haven’t decided_ ). 

With a start, he hears that same laugh again, and, opening his eyes for a moment he sees Kirk entering the gym with Ensigns Sulu and Chekov at his sides. 

“You totally doubted me on the shuttle ride! I could see it in your eyes!” Sulu is saying.

“Okay, you’re not wrong,” Kirk responds laughingly, “it’s just that the only time I’d seen someone fence was in a rerun of _The Parent Trap_ on TV! The thought of a little girl with a stick didn’t inspire much confidence when we were about to jump headfirst through thousands of meters of space. Seriously, why fencing?” Spock notices absently that the trio are carrying foils and masks. Spock closes his eyes and allows their voices to wash over him. He tries to make up his mind about Kirk.

***

“Haven’t you ever read the  _Three Musketeers_?” Sulu is asking him, “As a kid I wanted to be D’artagnan.” 

“Just so long as you don’t start go starting crazed sword fights with everyone for no apparent reason,” Jim returns, just as he’s spotting Spock in the corner of the gym, body bending gracefully in an unfamiliar set of poses.

“Da! But it vas alvays Arramis zat vas my favorrite.” Chekov chimes in.

“The priest?” Jim asks distractedly. He’s watching Spock out of the corner of his eye, as Sulu and Chekov continue to discuss which musketeers they would be. He is both afraid and excited by the thought of Spock noticing him. All their interactions so far have been unpredictable and while part of him knows to leave well enough alone, the part of him that usually gets him knocked flat on his back in a bar is _itching_ to see what will happen this time. 

“Which would you be Kirk?” Sulu’s voice breaks him out of his reverie.

“Hmmm,” he considers “Well Athos is totally the hottest, but I’m not exactly the repressed, mysterious type… So, probably Porthos.” Sulu and Chekov laugh. 

“That’s you all over Kirk, you’ve both got the same three favorite activities.”

“What can I say, the dude has good taste! Unlike Bones of course… It’s a good thing he’s not here you know, otherwise we’d all be getting his three favorite lectures — 

“Don’t tell me, alcohol poisoning, STD’s and reckless endangerment?”

“I should get that down for my epitaph,” says Jim, (only half joking).

“Don’t you mean on the backs of all 17 soon-to-be published, riveting tell-all biographies?” Sulu asks. Jim groans noncommittally at this. Spock can probably _hear_  them, and he _can’t_  talk about being famous for insulting Spock and not saving Vulcan right now (or ever again). So he maybe panics a little, but well, offense really is the best defense, and Kirk’s have no sense of self preservation, so he’s not exactly surprised to find himself shouting across the room.

“Spock! Here’s our Athos! I was going to have Bones be Athos,” he babbles, “but this is too perfect, Bones can be Constance Bonacieux. Spock, what do you say?” Jim can feel himself grinning somewhat too forcefully as Spock opens his eyes. _Oh shit, he’s going to ignore me, shit, shit, Jim you and your big mouth_. But then _blessed be all the saints in heaven_ , there it is, that raised eyebrow. He’s not going to be ignored.

“I can assure you that I am not currently concealing a dysfunctional marriage to a homicidal Frenchwoman.” Spock says steadily. Jim can barely contain his glee. Spock’s going to play.

“That’s exactly what Athos would say!” Jim says triumphantly. “Besides, that’s not the point. Come on, you can’t tell me you didn’t ever want to be a musketeer. Everyone in Starfleet’s crazy the same way, even you Spock.” He can hear Sulu and Chekov whispering behind him but he doesn’t care. He doesn’t know why he's so comfortable spouting nonsense at this man, but it feels completely natural. Maybe it’s some crazy kind of cosmic nostalgia, a holdover from the other universe or maybe Jim is just dumb that way.

He’s not disappointed though. Spock raises the eyebrow again.

“So far as I am aware, a delusional desire to be part of an anachronistic and highly sensationalized military organization from the early modern period is not a requirement for entrance into Starfleet.”

“That’s not a no,” Jim notes with ill concealed delight. And because Kirks never know when to stop he asks “Do you wanna join?” gesturing to the fencing foils. “We’ll let you be the chief.” 

“As tempting as that no doubt exalted honor sounds, I am required elsewhere,” says Spock, nodding to Sulu and Chekov as he heads for the exit, stride efficient, a dark patch at the neck of his shirt. Spock’s manners are what they ever were, but Jim could’ve sworn he saw a latent smirk in those expressive eyes.

After Spock is gone, Jim comes back to Earth from the high he suddenly realizes he’s on and turns to see Sulu and Chekov’s stunned faces.

“He didn’t kill you,” says Sulu sounding shocked and just a bit disappointed. 

“Well don’t sound so pleased,” Jim grins as Sulu blushes a bit.

“Well, I did just lose twenty credits.”

“And let me guess, Chekov, you just won some?” Jim accuses. Chekov looks unabashed.

“Da! So I believe in ze inherrent goodness of ze univerrse? Goodness is its own revarrd yes, but tventy credits dosn’t hurrt.” Jim laughs. Maybe the universe really is good. He knows its no laughing matter, but he can’t help it. Spock didn’t kill him. He’s feeling up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you haven't read the Musketeers then I apologize for all the references. Hopefully you get the idea gist of the humor here: Porthos really is a womanizing, fight starting drunk and Athos really is a secretive, repressed tall dark and handsome type who was secretly married (but if you have read the three musketeers then you probably got the joke about Athos-as-Spock being a little too close to home because Spock actually was secretly married to a beautiful but homicidal woman). 
> 
> Credits:  
> The title of this chapter is a reference to the Smiths song.


	3. In which Spock consults the carpeting and yes, the "waiting room" is a metaphor

Jim is in his and Bone’s dorm room, lying on his bed in his boxers and staring at the ceiling. It's whitish-gray and uneven, with irregular protrusions that are easy to imagine are faces, or eyes watching him.

Ever since the Enterprise got back (“snatching a victory from the jaws of harrowing defeat and a black hole” as one newspaper had put it) Starfleet’s been a bit of a mess. While the bulk of the fleet had been unhurt, safe in the Laurentian system, over three quarters of the graduating cadets and a quarter of the presiding professors had died. It was only the mechanical reassertion of military discipline, the ceaseless turning of the machine, that was carrying them all through the uncountable memorial services, funerals, will readings and vigils, all scrutinized by the hawkish eyes of media attention.

Jim has not been spared. Pike is still in recovery and so, suddenly Jim (well, technically he _had_ been the captain) found himself saddled with a myriad of unexpected duties. Never mind that he didn’t know whether he’d ever be allowed on a starship again thanks to the _Kobayashi Maru_ — it was his job to write mission reports, review mission reports, _approve_  mission reports, answer for his decisions in front of review boards, answer for his decisions to the media, oversee the refitting of the _Enterprise_ , preside over memorial services, recommend commendations and write letters to the families of the deceased. 

He keeps catching himself wondering why Starfleet doesn’t assign someone more qualified to these tasks, someone better, and every time remembers why with a feeling of emptiness. 

In many of these duties, Spock has been by his side, his very presence lending a dignity to the endless torrent of words and ceremonies. Spock and he haven’t really talked since The Apology though. They’ve said a few terse words to one another before and after ceremonies, but (naturally) both of their minds seem to be focused elsewhere. 

Jim sighs, his mind continuing to drift yet again through the rut of worries that his brain seems to have been stuck in for the last few weeks. He hasn’t been sleeping very well lately. There’s been a tightness around his eyes and the last time he remembers really laughing was that time at the gym and that seems forever ago. What he really wants (needs) is to go out. To dance and drink and laugh, to start a good fight or find someone to sleep with till the sadness falls off him like bad news. That’s how he’d always grieved before. But he can’t _do_ any of that, because the optics of James T. Kirk, savior of Earth going out to get wasted would look insensitive at best and career-ending at worst. He can see the headlines now… "Hero of Earth almost drowns in his own saliva!" It is to this uneasy loop of thoughts that he finally falls asleep.

He wakes with a start to a sharp knocking sound. Before he knows what’s happening he’s rolling out of bed ready for anythi— and falling the meter and a half to the floor. 

“Fuck! Ouch! Shit, shit, shit!” _Honestly, fuck these stupid tall beds._  The room is dark with no lights on and as he moves towards the door he stubs his toe on something.

“AGHH! Fuck! God, Bones, I swear if you forgot the code one more time,” he’s saying as he hits the button to open the door. And then he’s looking up into Spock’s face, dramatically backlit by the corridor and _fuck_. He’s sees Spock’s mouth opening to say something and so, relying on his many years of intensive, advanced combat training, he does what any self-respecting Starfleet captain would do given the same circumstances and slams his hand against the button that closes the door. 

He lets out a breath that probably Spock can _hear_  and (again, relying on that training) grabs a T-shirt and jeans out of his wardrobe, pulls them on in a flash, runs a hand through his hair and is opening the door again before he can think about it.

***

Spock knocks on Kirk's dorm room door. From inside he hears a yell and then a crash and then someone swearing and then another crash and more swearing. He hears Kirk saying

"Bones, I swear if you forgot the code one more time," and then the door is jerking open and he's looking down into Kirk's eyes which shift from annoyed to petrified in a moment. Kirk is shirtless, hair sticking out in different directions, wearing nothing but underclothes and Spock opens his mouth to say something (he's not sure what) when Kirk slams the door in his face. Spock waits patiently as he hears muttering and drawers opening. When the door opens again, Kirk is dressed, but still looks like he’s ready to bolt any second. Spock bites his cheek so as not to laugh.

“What can I do for you Commander?” Kirk asks in a surprisingly calm voice. For a moment, Spock can’t decide whether or not to take Kirk’s cue and pretend that nothing happened. In the end, he decides not to torture the obviously frightened man who was only a cadet until very recently any further and simply raises an eyebrow and says 

“I came to inform you that Captain Pike’s doctors are now allowing visitors. I thought that you would appreciate this information.” 

“Oh, good," Kirk says looking marginally calmer. "Can I go visit now?” Kirk asks, clearly trying to plot an escape. _Nice try_ , Spock thinks.

“Yes, I am going there myself,” Spock says. Kirk looks deflated for a second.

“Ok, I’ll go with you. Give me a second.” Spock gives him 112 seconds, after which time Kirk emerges (for the third time) from the room, this time wearing shoes and pulling on a sweater.

They walk in silence out of the building and across the Academy’s campus to the Starfleet medical facility. It’s early evening, and just a few stars are out. Spock wonders what Kirk would do if he said _So, is Dr. McCoy is in the habit of forgetting his code?_  Would he hyperventilate? Explode? Spock, out of his great magnanimity and beneficence decides not to ask. In the end it is Kirk who (probably out of desperation) decides to break the silence.

"Hey, do you know what's going to happen with the whole  _Kobayashi Maru_ debacle?" Kirk looks at him worriedly. "I put in a formal apology, but you could still call for a tribunal."

"I have dropped the charges." Kirk looks at him, startled. "I believe my arguments were disproved rather spectacularly in the events that followed," Spock finishes wryly.

"Oh, well that's great. Disproven or not, you're still the best litigator in Starfleet and I was not looking forward to being pilloried or tarred and feathered or whatever it is they do to dishonorable discharges nowadays."

"I would tell you that you are exaggerating to the point of foolishness, however I believe you to be joking."

“You're a master of apophasis,* you know that? Oh, and I haven’t had a chance to ask you yet, and you’re one of the few people I know who actually might know something since you’re a professor. Do you have any idea what Starfleet’s going to do about end of year tests? I mean, we had a week and a half left of classes before…” Kirk trails off. Spock does know what Starfleet intends to do as it happens. 

“While it is not yet known to the student body at large, as you are technically my superior officer,” Kirk starts at this. “I am cleared to tell you that Starfleet plans not to hold end of year exams and instead evaluate the remaining cadets based on their performance in the field.” 

“Yes!” Kirk hisses as he does a fist pump. He quickly looks over at Spock as if expecting to be scolded. “Sorry, it’s just I was really not looking forward to taking my advanced xeno-diplomacy final. It’s my worst subject and I think Professor Ocha'nta hates me.” Spock is about to respond, but just then they arrive at the medical facility. Kirk pushes open the door and Spock follows. They check in at the front desk and are asked to sit in the waiting room until their names are called. 

The room, like all rooms in all hospitals, is uniform in its drabness. There are a few other people in it, mostly reading magazines or drifting in and out of sleep. Spock doesn’t recognize any of them. Kirk gets coffee from a samovar and then sits down next to Spock on the tediously patterned chairs. 

“Was your fencing practice with Mr.'s Sulu and Chekov successful?” Spock asks to break the silence but also because he is curious. Kirk looks up from where he was staring into the depths of his coffee.

“Well, that depends on for whom you mean. It was certainly a success for Sulu,” Kirk says with unmistakable chagrin. Spock is silent again. He’s not the most empathetic person, but Kirk seems a little… off, for lack of a more precise word. Spock realizes all at once that although he's met Kirk several times over the last weeks he hasn’t heard Kirk’s annoying laugh in all that time. Every time he has seen him lately he's seemed strained and tired. He looks at Kirk from the corner of his eye, noting the slight shadows under his eyes and that his sweater is pilling. He also needs to shave. 

Spock looks to the shag carpet for answers. It's green and pied with specks of grey and purple and neglects to reply. _How eloquent, yes, you are quite correct._ Despite the carpets stubborn silence, Spock decides that many of his problems stem from being a man of thought rather than action. _Well, I too can be a man of action_ , he thinks and gets up, boldly going and retrieving a cheap chessboard from a stack of board games in the corner. 

“Do you play?” He asks, coming back to Kirk.

“Hmm?” says Kirk looking up. When he sees the chessboard he smiles as though at a private joke. Spock would like to know what’s so funny. “It’s funny you should ask, but I do,” Kirk says. Spock takes this as acquiescence and sets up the board. 

Kirk takes white, moving his knight into what Spock recognizes as an Andorrian opening. 

“Where did you learn to play?” Spock asks, moving a pawn forward.

“There was a set at my school, Highland Elementary, and I was curious so I,” Kirk stops, looking guilty. “Uh, borrowed it. But the librarian, Mr. Stewart, caught me absconding with it. He promised not to rat me out if I could beat him.”

“Did you?” Spock queries. Kirk gives him a scandalized look.

“Of course! My life was depending on it!” Spock wants to ask more questions, wants to know if Kirk kept playing chess, why it was so important to win, and more absurdly, wants to tell Kirk about how he learned to play chess, but just then their names are called. 

“We will have to finish our game at a later time.” Spock says as they get up. Kirk nods, smiling as they follow the nurse through a door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *A rhetorical technique where you bring something up by denying it. It gets used by politicians who want to seem like they're taking the high road. An example would be something like, "Well, I could tell you all about how my opponent is an irresponsible drunk, but I won't since I'm not going to stoop to ad hominem" or "I could make the case that Kirk and Spock are totally smashing during TOS based on all the steamy looks and ardent declarations, but I won't because it's too totally obvious."
> 
> Thank you so much for you kudos and support—it means a lot!


	4. In which Spock gets a pep-talk and Jim makes a promise

_“Tell me about a complicated man.”*_ Spock muses.

It’s the opening line to his favorite translation of the Odyssey.

 _No, actually tell me about him, I'd like to know. I'd like to know about me too while you’re at it_  he thinks not-so-ironically as he passes a holo screen broadcasting Starfleet’s award ceremony. The few seconds he’d seen were of Kirk’s face, (again), the unceasing motif of the past few weeks, smiling at the world as an award was pinned on his chest. 

Spock is walking through the vast and humid interior of shuttle hangar one, the voices of engineers echoing off the galvanized steel walls. He is here to speak with a flight supervisor about commissioning a shuttle. It’s been less than a month since the destruction of Vulcan and already a new planet has been chosen for a colony. Spock has seen the holos. 

His first thought upon seeing images of his people's future home was that it was the wrong color. The soils and rocks of this new world were not the iron rich hematite red of Vulcan (between 5.6 and 7.7% of the total mineral composition by volume). Instead the images appeared washed out by the reddish-yellows and browns that indicated higher levels of lepidocrocite and goethite.

Spock clenches a fist. It does not matter what this new planet looks like (that it does not look like Vulcan). His species is endangered and it is his duty to aid his people in any capacity he can.

In any event, he supposes his life there will be short. As a hybrid, he is a genetic dead end, incapable of siring children and thus he will almost certainly not be re-bonded. When his pon farr comes he will die unless he completes kolinhar (which seems an unlikely possibility considering his mixed biology). He will be alone.

Not that he had told Nyota that of course, when he ended their brief romance two weeks ago. She hadn’t asked many questions; indeed she seemed to have been expecting his decision. Before his mother's death, Nyota’s resigned understanding might have triggered feelings of guilt, have caused Spock to wonder whether the Vulcan way was the right one; whether he was not being a coward. Now that he knows he is a coward and that he cannot face his own emotions, logic has become his only recourse.

It's been weeks, but every time he closes his eyes to meditate he feels the anger burning behind his eyes, strangling him and the satisfaction that Nero is dead welling up like poison. His hatred is like the black hole in space, all-consuming and inescapable. He vows to himself that he will never love again if this is what it brings.

When he wakes up during the nights he feels ashamed of himself. How could Kirk do what he could not even find it in himself to do? ( _"It's logic Spock, I thought you'd like that"_ ). He cannot even imagine being merciful to Nero.

He remembers their visit to Pike, that evening a week ago.

“Well, I’ll eat my hat, are you two actually friends?” Pike had asked, looking frail and weak in the hospital bed, his legs bound in white plasticasts that look too large for him in his newly small body.

“You missed a lot while you were out, but not _that_ much,” Kirk had quipped in response, grinning.

“Well, last I recall, Spock was two seconds away from biting your head off. Something must have changed,” Pike noted, looking between them. Spock had taken a moment to picture himself performing the act of oral decapitation Pike’s words had evoked. The image was, like many of those paired with human idioms, both physically impossible, and emotionally resonant he had mused.

“Well, last time you saw us, Spock thought I was a narcissistic fuck-up with a bad case of ADHD and I thought Spock had a stick the size of the Florida panhandle up his ass, and now,” here Kirk had paused artfully. “Well come to think of it, nothing much has changed.” Pike had looked unimpressed. Inside, however, Spock had wondered if anything really had changed.

 _I don’t have anything the size of the Florida panhandle anywhere in my body, that would be physically impossible (but emotionally resonant)-- But maybe that doesn't matter. I'm going to die alone on Vulcan. I have made my choice._ He thinks all this with a maudlin sense of irony that only half conceals his fierce envy of Kirk’s freedom to be himself, to do what he wants the way Spock can’t. 

As he walks, deep in thought, he sees his father standing to the right of his path. Even as he calls out though he realizes his mistake. As the man turns to look at him the seconds seem to stretch viscously into minutes and he feels his heart beat faster in his side. As he looks into the mans eyes he finds himself thinking illogically of all the Terran associations of Vulcans with elves and sprites and beings from another world.

“I am not our father,” the Vulcan says calmly with a hint of humor in his intelligent eyes. “There are so few Vulcans left, we cannot afford to ignore each other.” _Our...?_ Spock reels. This strange phantasm, this  _emotional_  being from another realm is… _himself?_ Several things fall into place and he asks the first question that comes into his head. _When you're at[Mimir’s well](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M%C3%ADmisbrunnr) you might as well drink_  is his most illogical thought to date.

“Then why did you send Kirk aboard, when you alone could have explained the truth?” _Why didn’t you tell me? Did you know what he would do? Who are you really?_  The answer when it comes is not what he was expecting.

“Because you needed each other," the Vulcan says calmly, meaning every word. "I could not deprive you of the revelation of all that you could accomplish together. Of a friendship, that would define you both, in ways you cannot yet realize.” As those glimmering eyes keep looking at him Spock feels naked. It’s as though this man knows everything. Every bit of shame and anger and confusion and desire he has ever felt. And yet he is being looked at with eyes that radiate affection, compassion and even love. Spock cannot even imagine looking at himself that way.

“How did you persuade him to keep your secret?”

“He inferred that universe-ending paradoxes would ensue should he break his promise.” Spock is so shocked at this point that he almost laughs out loud because that really is funny. He doesn’t of course, but it is a near thing.

“You lied,” he accuses.

“Oh, I... I implied,” his older self answers, clearly not ashamed.

“A gamble?” he asks, confused.

“An act of faith,” the other Spock says with deep confidence. “One I hope that you will repeat in the future at Starfleet.”

His next words feel like the fall of an executioners ax. “In the face of extinction, it is only logical I resign my Starfleet commission and help rebuild our race,” he returns.

“And yet," his older self says with the expression of someone long used to navigating the mysteries of the unfamiliar. "You can be in two places at once. I urge you to remain in Starfleet. I have already located a suitable planet on which to establish a Vulcan colony." Here his older self pauses, the benediction of patience and love in his eyes.

"Spock, in this case, do yourself a favor. Put aside logic. Do what feels right." His older self turns to walk away but then stops and turns back. "Since my customary farewell would appear oddly self-serving, I shall simply say good luck.” For some reason, even after all of the strangeness of this encounter, this last declaration still has the power to make his heart leap. _What made you believe in luck? in acts of faith? In saying things like "what feels right?" How can you look at me like you love me?_ he wants to ask. He has never before believed he could love himself. _Maybe luck and miracles do exist_. 

***

When Spock walks onto the bridge and asks to be his first officer, Jim Kirk almost does something crazy and unprofessional, like hug him or do a wild victory dance on the bridge. Instead he says, sedately enough but eyes full of feeling, “It would be my honor, Commander.” _We’re going to be friends Spock, just you wait._  Screw it, almost? He believes in miracles full stop. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *The first line of Emily Wilson's 2017 translation of the Odyssey. She's the poem's first female translator in its history.
> 
> Note about the 2009 borrowings: I chose to include the full conversation because it's an incandescently beautiful moment. Please note old Spock's parting "Good luck." Looks like someone convinced you after all. 
> 
> Thank you for your kudos and comments! I've really appreciated the depth of responses I've gotten. This story will be longer than I originally intended because it turns out that takes time to make an emotionally constipated Vulcan and Captain floozie fall in love.


	5. Which contains several blasphemous references to Surak advertising Cheetos as a higher calling

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> EEK! My computer froze yesterday so I couldn't post. To solve the problem, I slept with my laptop under the covers with me like it was my own child so that it would stay warm. It worked, so I'm posting today.

Despite having forgiven him, it’s later, (much later), before Spock stops looking at Kirk and seeing a man trying to elicit an emotional reaction from him; a new, blue-eyed version of the Vulcan children who used to taunt him. It takes Spock even longer to realize that Kirk ( _Jim_ ) teases him because he likes him. That he wants to see Spock’s emotions not to mock them, but because he likes those parts of Spock too.

All of this would have been obvious to the casual observer of course, Spock thinks ruefully, but Spock's observations have always been, for both good and ill, anything but casual.

***

They’re on Starbase 4, walking side by side through the bright, crowded thoroughfare. They're on their way back to the Enterprise after a meeting with the bases’ quartermaster, a parsimonious Tellarite (in both character and stature) with the look of one beset upon. The meeting had been somewhat less-than efficient because the quartermaster had punctiliously insisted on reviewing the entirety of their records for the last 3 months down to individual replicator entires. He had been suspicious over Ensign Chekov’s eating habits in particular, repeatedly asking in a distrustful manner what anyone would was doing with so much borscht. 

“Eating it, I presume,” the Captain had said calmly enough.

“Yes, but why borscht? Surely no one could eat _that_ much beet soup“ the Tellarite responded with narrowed eyes. 

“He’s still growing,” the Captain had said with an air of contained exasperation. The quartermaster did not look appeased, but agreed to move on to the still more dubious matters (in his eyes) of the Captains ripped shirts, Scotty’s numerous part requisitions, Ensign Riley’s internet use (which contained extensive time spent on Irish karaoke sites), Dr. McCoy’s stock of medicinal alcohol and the the vast number of missing socks that he implied was reaching epidemic proportions.

The quartermaster persecuted each of these lines of inquiry as though his efforts could uncover something sinister and devious.

By the time the Tellarite released them, still muttering about socks, Jim's eyes recalled those of the small prey animals that Spock had seen his _sehlat_ , I-Chaya chase on their walks in the desert.

“God, why are all quartermaster’s like that?!” Jim complained as they walked out of the Tellarite’s office. “He made it sound like I’m running an illegal ponzi scheme based on the proceeds of a dirty underwear ring! Well in my case, ripped shirts, not underwear,” Jim amended thoughtfully. “Where do these guys come up with these ideas? I mean, just because our crew’s the youngest in Starfleet, doesn’t mean we’re all hooligans and criminals. I’m sick of this attitude everywhere we go.”

“His interest in Chekov’s dining habits did seem a bit extreme,” Spock acknowledged.

“No, he was barking up the right tree with on that one,” Jim said with a frustrated sigh. “What _is_  he doing with all that borscht?” He said under his breath. “I need something to drink, do you mind Spock?”

“Not at all Captain.” Indeed, Spock is glad for Jim’s suggestion as he too had found the experience trying.

When Jim steered them into a convenience store, Spock looked around curiously as he had never been in one before. It was full of bright plastic colors, gaudy advertisements and two for one deals. Spock has never seen so many products from so many different planets in one place before. 

The sight was somewhat overwhelming, but Jim appeared to notice his bafflement and gestured him towards the back of the store, to the glowing refrigerated shelves of drinks. Jim glanced at Spock as if sizing him up and then opened one of the transparent doors, letting out a blast of artificially cooled air. He handed Spock carton with a picture of an oddly shaped fruit on it. Jim then opened a different door and pulled out a bottle of what was presumably beer for himself.

As they got in line, Spock examined the nutritional information on his carton. Satisfied with the protein to sugar ratio he surreptitiously examined the rows and rows of products around them. 

“They teach you about the grandeur of the Federation at the Academy and feed you a million articles about the symbolic unity in diversity therein—which granted, is great propaganda and good for recruitment—but they tend to leave out the fact that unification is good for business. I mean, in one sense the Federation is just capitalism on a grand scale, bound together by free-trade and high tariffs on non-members. I mean how else would we get _Cheetos_  all the way out here for only 2 credits?” Jim said glumly as he poked a bright orange bag with a bespectacled jungle cat on it. 

Only few months ago, Spock would have responded to the sense of Jim’s argument logically and succinctly. Now, Spock almost winces at the thought of such poor social tact.

After knowing him for over half a year, Spock can tell that Jim is clearly in a bad mood. He knows this because he has heard the Captain crowing over "Cheetos" on numerous other occasions on other Starbases and planets and likewise bemoaning that _Cheetos_  cannot be produced by the _Enterprises_ ’ replicators due to copyright infringement laws. Were Jim in a better mood, the _Cheetos_ ’ presence on this distant outpost would be a cause for celebration rather than gloom.

So instead of responding the the sense of Jim’s argument, Spock temporizes.

“Captain, what exactly are _Cheetos_?” Jim looks up at Spock with widening eyes. This was apparently the right question. 

“You’ve never had _Cheetos_? Dangerously cheesy? The cheese that goes crunch?” Jim asks with increasing incredulity at Spock’s blank expression. “No wonder you have such a boring life!” Jim says with glee. “Here, you have to try them,” says Jim, pulling a bag from the shelf.

“Captain I hardly think—“ Spock protests perfunctorily, because he knows it’s the right thing to do if he wants Jim’s eyes to light up.

“Nuh-uh. I’m not hearing it. I bet if Surak had tried _Cheetos_ ’ the _Kir'Shara_  would have turned out differently. I can see it now,” Jim says sweeping a hand before him in a grand gesture and beginning to talk in what clearly he believes to be a facsimile of an old, wise Vulcan. “The essential ingredient to life is _Cheetos_ , this is a permissible passion. Do no harm to those that harm you - offer them _Cheetos_ : for then you too will have _Cheetos_ ”* Jim says seriously. Spock raises an eyebrow. 

“When advertisement encroaches on religion the results are often as horrific as you have just rendered them,” Spock responds primly, but he is inwardly somewhat impressed that Jim knows Surak’s teachings well enough to alter them, albeit sacrilegiously. 

“Hey, it’s not easy being cheesy,” says Jim with mock hurt. “Just think of it as perfect product placement.” Jim continues to prattle off ever more brilliant Surakian Cheetos advertisements as they pay the man at the counter and exit the store. Spock drinks his juice and Jim drinks his beer, handing Spock a strange, wizened orange chip. 

“That looks inedible,” Spock says even as he takes it and puts it in his mouth. Jim’s laughter at his disgruntled expression when he sees the cheese on his fingers echoes off the walls of the Starbase.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *These are Jim's version of Surakian wisdom teachings (which were recorded in the Kir'Shara). The original verses are "The essential ingredient is that of the abhoration of violence. This is the permissible passion; the one that leads to its mastery." and "Do no harm to those that harm you - offer them peace: then you will have peace."
> 
> Thank you for your reviews and responses! This is my first story of any length, so it's been really encouraging to hear from you.


	6. Which is entirely too full of tears

Even though he _knows_ he needs to be kept in check, it takes Jim a long time before he stops associating Spock with all the people throughout his life who ever thought they were better than him. For the first few months whenever Spock coldly questioned Jim’s decisions he viscerally recalled all the jerks who ever thought he was nothing. But that was just the first few months. By the time Spock tells him about how he said fuck you to the VSA (okay in Spock’s words he had “rejected entrance” but Jim knows how to read between the lines) he’s not surprised to learn that Spock was a rebel in his own way. Spock’s professional antagonism has long lost its sting with the growing knowledge that Spock is someone he can trust. Although he sometimes hides behind his Vulcaness, Spock understands better than most that precedent does not mean right and that there is a difference between being fair and being good. And Spock _is_  good. Even once he sees past Spock’s sometimes facade, sees how Spock sometimes doubts himself, sometimes isn’t perfect, or even kind, he’s still good. Better than anyone Jim’s ever known. 

***

It’s ten months into their mission and they’re in Jim’s quarters playing chess when a disagreement about an upcoming away mission becomes a horrific fight. It doesn’t really matter what this specific mission is about or what their disagreement was. They’ve argued a million times, in every possible location on the Enterprise about every possible subject, from the grandiose to the mundane and everything in between. They’ve argued about Tolstoy (Spock) or Dostoevsky (Jim) in the corridors, vegetarianism (Spock) or flexitarianism (Jim lost that one) in the mess, Ancient Greek poetry (Spock) or Ancient Vulcan poetry (Jim, oddly) in the turbolift, cats (Spock) or dogs (Jim likes both) on an away mission, utilitarianism (Spock, of course) or casuistry (Jim, obviously) on the bridge and ice cream or kie’thra whenever Jim wants dessert (surprisingly they both agree that ice cream is better, but they argued about it anyway). 

Somehow this time is different. It started out as a discussion of how to locate a group of Andorian diplomats who were taken captive by a rogue band of separatist Caitians. Jim wants to embed a tracking device behind his ear, get captured by the Caitians at a trading outpost their known to frequent and have the _Enterprise_ pick him up, presumably with the Andorian prisoners, easy peasy. But Spock is being a persnickety ass.

Spock thinks that Jim’s plan is “preposterously dangerous,” too full of variables and in short, totally out of the question. Their game of chess gets progressively more antagonistic along with their argument, with each of them trying to thwart the other at all costs rather than win. The pieces left dead by the way side are collateral. Spock would rather waste precious time listening to rumors, and gathering information until it’s too god damn late. Doesn’t he understand that people could be _killed_? Soon Spock’s telling Jim that he’s being foolishly reckless, a stern cast to his mouth but all Jim hears is snide voice saying _Jim, you're a stupid adrenaline junkie who doesn’t deserve to be captain because you care more about glory than your job, you worthless idiot_ and it hurts to much and he's so mad that he snaps and takes Spock’s queen right out of his hands and throws it on the ground as hard as he can, telling Spock that he’s an asshole, that he doesn’t understand, that's he's a computer who could never understand. And then Spock’s clenching his teeth snapping at him, mocking him, a snide expression in his dark eyes.

“My name is James T. Kirk," Spock says in an uncanny impression of Jim’s own dumbest, cockiest voice. "And I don’t believe in no-win scenarios because I’m too _stubborn_ to accept reality. I enjoy bullying people into getting my way when they’ve out-argued me, styling my hair to look like a brainless frat boy and hitting on women who are not that into me. So you should just agree with whatever I say _Spock_ , and then clean up for me afterwards” Spock says, tilting his head and anger flickering in his eyes. Jim almost reels. It’s exactly what Jim’s been afraid Spock has thought about him this whole time, like looking through a distorted mirror and seeing that his worst fears are true. Jim sees red.

“Well _Jim_ , I Commander Spock and I’m an anal retentive, misanthropic _bitch_ because my daddy didn’t love me and I got bullied as a kid,” Spock’s lip is curled disdainfully and Jim wants nothing more than to wipe it off his face so he keeps shouting, goes lower. “And I _love_   taking out how much I hate myself on other people because it makes me feel powerful. Oh wait, did I say love?" Jim smirks as he sees Spock take that hit. "I meant entertain positive regard for because I pretend I don’t have emotions. I’d rather control people than let them get close to me because I’m too ashamed of myself to be who I really am and Jim, let's be friends because you’re the perfect guy to take it all out on because you’re a living breathing human id who embodies everything I hate about myself.” He’s glad to see that Spock looks really angry now. They’re both standing, Spock shaking, looking like he’s going to hit Jim in the face and he feels the phantom pain of Spock’s hands at his throat.

“Well _Spock_ ,” Spock spits at him. “Let’s play the game where I act like a halfwit and do something reckless and you have to watch me almost be killed. It’s my favorite game because I feel a constant need to prove myself, a need which manifests itself in a pig-headedness of astronomical proportions and I can assure you that _my_ daddy issues are more important than yours are because my dad died in _space_ and now I’m trying to k—ki—kill myself too,” Spock’s voice breaks over a raspy breath, and suddenly Jim realizes that he’s shaking with barely-held back sobs. “—and I’m too much of a coward to do it myself so I’m trying to make it look like an accident and get Spock to sign off on it.” Spock takes a horrified gasp and Jim is moving towards him without thinking, throwing his arms around Spock and hanging on as Spock struggles against him. They’re half wrestling and half embracing, Spock taking shaking breaths that Jim can feel rattle through him.

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry Spock. It’s not your fault,” he’s saying, not sure what he's talking about, the ghosts of his father, his absent brother and mother and all the people who died on Tarsus IV crowding into those words. Spock doesn’t say anything but he feels hands dig into his shoulders and the wet slide of Spock’s tears against his neck and his own down his face. 

“I can’t let you die Jim,” Spock says and Jim can practically feel the emptiness of the eight billion lives lost inside of Spock seeping into him. Jim takes a shuddering breath.

“I know. I know,” is all he can say as they stand there, comforting each other like two little children whose parents are gone.


	7. In which Spock is moony and lovelorn

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please imagine this song playing while you read: ["You'll Never Know" sung by The Platters](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZlQLVqQfIbY)

When Spock finally understands that he is in love with Jim, has been in love with Jim for a long time now, it is not a shock. Despite telling himself that he would not love again, night after night in desperation all those months ago at the Academy, Spock knows now that he is incapable of not loving. Even were he to try to expurgate everything else that he is by undergoing Kolinahr, this simple, (this patient, miraculous, durable, ecstatic) feeling would remain.

Jim is human and capricious, sometimes angry or disconsolate, sometimes gleeful and manic, an ever changing multitude that leaves Spock breathless and overwhelmed. _I love you_ he thinks when he sees him on the bridge, every evening they play chess, every time their eyes meet across a room full of diplomats and dignitaries, when he goes to sleep at night and when he wakes every morning. 

Spock thinks that it must be obvious, that it must written across his face as deep and as tall as the meter high letters that they saw carved on the Eternal Walls of Nimbus VII, that it must shine in his eyes like the night-blooming flowers of Pleiades V with its hundred moons and phosphorescent blossoms blown across the darkness like stars.

Jim must know. Sometimes Spock even thinks that Jim loves him too, when he catches a certain look in Jim's eyes or when Jim says something to him just so. And his heart will leap and an imaginary future will spread before him like a beautiful but beguiling dream.

And yet Jim doesn't love him, or at least not that way. Jim loves him like a friend, like a brother, reserving that other kind of love for everyone and no one.

Jim must know. He must know, and is somehow able to treat Spock as though nothing has changed. And Spock is even be grateful to Jim for never touching him in that way, for never ruining their friendship and Spock's sanity by leaving him behind in a comets trail of former lovers. 

But at night he imagines touching him, with his hands and mouth, touching his chest, his lips, his eyelids, of touching his mind and exploring its unknown habitations. The images he sees in the dark are hazy and partially filled in with the parts of Jim he has seen (his exposed back in the locker rooms, his chest when Spock came to his room unannounced, the bend of his neck as he works on the bridge, his preternaturally blue eyes flashing with anger and his mouth open and always laughing). 

Whenever he sees Jim courting an ambassador or a passenger in transport he dies a thousand deaths all at once and continually. He even cries once, alone in his quarters, at last falling asleep with exhaustion. _I love you, I love you, I love you_  he thinks when he wakes in the morning.

Sometimes he almost decides to transfer, but then Jim smiles at him or says something stupid or funny or just asks for a status report and Spock knows he will not go. He will stay and be Jim’s friend and protect him and play chess with him and it will be enough.

***

They’re in a bar on Rothor VII, a small planet on the edge of Federation space. It’s their last stop before they go out into an uncharted sector of the galaxy, out into the unknown, _the never before, the soon to be_.

Spock grimaces reflexively into his drink at this sentimentalism and Jim shoots him a smirk that says _you rich kids_. He’s sitting on a stool at the bar, with the Captain and Esigns’ Sulu and Chekov on his right, the three of them entertaining a mixed group of planetary natives, trading stories back and forth trying to scare and impress each other by turns with increasingly ridiculous stories about the terrors of space. 

“Vell, I have heard of a planet vithout an atmosphere that has a volcano that can spout lava miles, _miles_  high, into space so that the starships must be careful to avoid it,” Chekov is saying with delight.

“Oh, yeah?” a dusky skinned Rothorian with three blue eyes arranged across their forehead like a diadem. “Well I’ve heard of a planet that’s entirely an ocean surrounded by an icy shell filled with huge sea monsters that swim through the dark!” Jim, who is sitting nearest Spock, turns to him with a grin.

“I really hope we don’t have to negotiate a trade deal with sea monsters of incredible size. I call dibs on not beaming down for that one,” Jim says, his eyes glittering with alcohol and humor. The sight causes Spock’s heart to jolt momentarily in his side. _You love, you love me, you love me_ , say those eyes. Jim gestures to the bartender asking for another Romulan ale. Spock is about to ask what giant, sightless sea monsters would be likely to export when Nyota leans against the bar on his other side.

“That's a lot of drinks for one dude,” she says to Jim. “His ale’s on me,” she directs at the bartender.

“His ale’s on him,” Jim says to the bartender. “Thanks, but no thanks,” he says to Nyota with a grin. Spock is not exactly sure what’s going on, but it is clear that the two of them know something he doesn’t.

“Do you at least want to know my name before you completely reject me?” Nyota says with mock petulance. Jim and Nyota burst out laughing at this.

“Ugh, I will never live that night down, will I?” Jim asks with feigned embarrassment. Whatever happened on the night in question he is clearly, at least partially, proud of it.

“Nope!” says Nyota cheerfully. “It’ll probably go down in the annals of Starfleet history for generations upon generations of bright-eyed cadets to read about how I laughed at your lame pickup lines and turned you down.” Jim groans into his drink.

"It was a bad night for the Kirk name," he says disconsolately.

“You shouldn’t have joined Starfleet the next day, otherwise it wouldn’t be important,” Nyota says unabashed.  

“She’s talking about the night we met,” Jim says to Spock. Spock has heard that Jim joined Starfleet after a conversation with Captain Pike, having been informed by the man himself, however he has never heard this story in full.

“Ah. May I ask what, in the ensuing events caused you to decide to join Starfleet?”

“I heard it was that he was so hungover he took a wrong turn and ended up on the wrong shuttle,” Sulu, who has apparently been listening says.

“No, I vas told it vas to follow Lieutenant Uhura because he vas is love!” chimes in the romantic Chekov, who seems to have also been listening.

“Hmmm, I don’t think so,” says Nyota. “I think it was because he lost the fight with Cupcake and decided to become Captain to annoy him.”

“Stop spreading lies, you gossip mongers,” Jim tells them, turning to Spock. “The real answer is that it wasn’t a great night," he says tilting his head. "In a long string of not-so-good nights, actually. Anyway, Pike talked to me after I lost the fight—“

“After you lost the fight badly,” Nyota cuts in.

“After I lost the fight with _honor_ ,” Jim says pointedly, glaring at Nyota who snorts. “He said,” and here Jim’s face turns a curious mix of ironic and deeply serious, as though the irony were a thin shield protecting what his next words mean to him. “Your father was Captain of a starship for twelve minutes. He saved eight hundred lives, including your mother's and yours. I dare you to do better.” Jim takes a drink of the new glass of ale the bartender sets down in front of him, eyes still that peculiar mix of self-deprecating and far away.

The others go back to laughing, their spirits as high as the eruptions of Chekov’s invented volcano but Jim continues to stare into the distance. 

Whatever history will make of Jim’s reasons for joining, Spock thinks he understands. The Jim Kirk of this universe joined Starfleet to save lives, his capacity for self-sacrifice only rivaled by his gratitude at being alive. Jim is curious in this way. So alive and yet always willing to die. Spock closes his eyes and breaths in, resolving for the thousandth to the nth power of thousandth time to protect Jim, to die for him, to be his friend always, to tell him he loves him in with every action since he cannot say the words.

***

Later that night, as he lies in bed, having watched Jim leave with the dusky Rothorian, he imagines what it would be like to be one of Jim's conquests. To have his love for a night and never again. He imagines Jim laughing as he undresses Spock, kissing him and saying meaningless things like _you're beautiful, you're perfect_ , _I'll love you forever Spock_.


	8. In which Jim has the eye of the tiger

Jim wakes the next morning at 5:05, noticing with an ominous feeling that those numbers spell out S.O.S. As if to confirm this instinct, when he prods the roof of his mouth with his tongue he feels the first few layers of skin peel off leaving only an uncomfortable tenderness. With a surge of morning-after-remorse he remembers eating a piece of pizza last night so hot that it burned his mouth. And yet, like the dumbass that he is, he'd kept eating it, providing clear proof to the philosophic mind that intelligence does not equal sound judgement. _This will mean either no coffee or losing more skin_ is his painful reflection.

He rolls to his feet, gratefully noticing the lack of a hangover. Point one for Jim today. His shift doesn’t start for another three hours and years of living on a farm tell him he can’t go back to sleep again. Caught between a rock and a hard place (between lying in bed bored or doing something productive) Jim thinks to himself _I am a trooper, I am awesome, I have the eye-of-the-tiger_  with a quiet, almost unnoticed _what would Spock do?_ tucked in there. This motivational strategy works (seriously he should sell bracelets with WWSD printed on them, he'd make a fortune) and so he puts on some sweatpants, running shoes and an exercise t-shirt and heads for the gym. 

The ships gym is relatively empty right now, it’s sleek lines undisturbed by milling crew members what with gamma shift still underway and most of beta and alpha shift at different places in their sleep cycles. He nods at the few beta-shift stragglers and alpha-shift early-birds, plugs in his headphones and gets to work on a treadmill. 

Jim usually exercises later in the day because he prefers the gym when there are more people. He likes the feeling of camaraderie and the buzz of talk and activity that surround him like a benediction. He’s no stranger to the early morning though and doesn’t mind the quiet. It reminds him of Iowa.

He remembers being angry and fifteen, running down the long straight roads, past field after field of knee-high corn, the stalks like unlikely gatherings of strangers or stern sentinels in the dark of the morning; of how flat and long and wide the world looked when the sun finally rose turning everything the same color of yellow-brown as his hair and skin; of breathing that cold, blue air. He remembers how it felt like if he just ran fast enough he could break through the sky ( _this time, this time, this time_ ), it’s expanse like a curtain in a theatre; its very implacability a certain promise of hidden, waiting things. There’s a lot he doesn’t miss about Iowa, but those runs aren’t one of them.

He comes back to himself, sweating in the perpetually humid (despite all attempts from maintenance) atmosphere of the gym. With the jolt he’s almost become used to he sees Spock off to his left, running uphill on his own treadmill and realizes it must be past 0600 because Spock’s like clockwork.

Jim’s noticed but never asked why Spock always runs uphill, but he wonders about it. _If I’m running flat over endless Iowa, is he running on Vulcan?_  He pictures a younger Spock running up a red mountain at exactly 0600, his face a mask of determination. Someday, but not yet, he’ll ask and Spock will tell him about where he's been running. About Mount Seleya in the morning, about the smell of favinit and mint, how he always had to empty the red sand out of his shoes before going inside and how he sometimes dreamed that the uncaring, hostile winds of Vulcan-that-was would carry him off into the sky.

Jim gets off the treadmill, legs shaky like a new born calf’s. He wobbles over to the bench press and does some progressions, muscles protesting, then heads for the combat rooms where he spars with an automated opponent. He checks a chronometer and sees that it’s just past 0700. Time for a shower and breakfast and then shift at 0800.

Jim is sweating, high as hell on endorphins as he walks into the locker rooms, stripping off his gross shirt as he goes. But abruptly his mind stutters to a halt and goes blank, blank, blank. He just gets the impression of long limbs, pale skin and obvious muscle, the back of a head dark with water before he’s pulling his shirt back on and dashing back to he’s quarters. His heart is galloping in his chest and his face is unnaturally hot and he’s still sweating,  _like a sinner in church_ , a voice that sounds suspiciously like Bones’ supplies.

He’s still moving on autopilot as he strips off his clothes and gets in the shower. Spock’s back. It was just Spock’s back. There’s no need for him to feel as though he’s done something wrong. There’s nothing wrong with being attracted to someone he rationalizes guiltily. He’s been attracted to Spock for forever now of course, but only in the same way he’s attracted to everyone he likes and finds interesting. Spock is no different from anyone else. _Then why are you treating him like he’s special? Why don’t you just sleep with him and get it over with?_ a voice asks. 

“Yeah, why don’t I just do that?” he asks the shower walls. It’s a question he’s asked himself before, each time with increasing urgency as the mission progresses and he gets to know Spock more. At first Jim had waved the question away thinking, _well I haven’t slept with Bones even though I’m attracted to him, so there! Spock's not special!_ But that’s different and he knows it. Alongside his attraction to Bones has always been the equal and opposite force of repulsion that accompanies the idea of sleeping with a family member. _Just no, ugh, no._  

But his attraction to Spock doesn’t have that same, icky, too-close-to-home feeling to interfere with it, and left unchecked it has become something he’s taken to ignoring with increasingly desperate hope. This strategy is why he tries to avoid situations like seeing Spock’s naked back dripping with water and looking like a scene straight out of high-caliber erotica.

So, why doesn't he stop overthinking it and just sleep with Spock? Maybe because for him sleeping with someone has always meant short-term (whether it be a night or a few months) and the only people who’ve really stuck around for the long-haul (Bones, Pike, even Uhura, despite their combative dynamic) are people he _hasn’t_  slept with. Maybe it’s because Spock’s part of his crew or because sex for Jim is usually about physical gratification and intrigue rather than the kind of emotional connection he has with Spock. Maybe it’s because he guesses that Spock doesn’t think about sex the same way he does or because he doesn’t want to complicate their friendship or their working relationship. Maybe it's because he doesn't like the idea of needing someone. Maybe it's because he's just scared.

In short there’s a million reasons not to sleep with Spock, to keep him in the crazy corn maze of overthinking it and so this persistent attraction has slowly and inexorably matured into something he doesn’t have a name for. 

It’s gotten so bad that sometimes he catches himself (embarrassingly) thinking about Spock like the romantic female protagonists of 19th century novels that he will never admit he’s read (multiple times).

 _You've got Elizabeth Bennet eyes_  he thinks as their gazes meet on the bridge or wants to ask _“Do you never smile Miss Eyre?”_ when Spock’s in a bad mood and Jim's trying to cheer him up over chess.

Or he’ll suddenly be reminded of Pip's words to Estella from _Great Expectations_   _"You are part of my existence, part of myself. You have been in every line I have ever read...You have been in every prospect I have ever seen since,"_  when they’re on an alien planet with twenty sunrises or thunderstorms that send lighting bolts flashing across the entire sky because Spock is _in_ everything now, is how he sees everything, in the beauty of every new and undiscovered world, in every good thing he ever does, in every wondrous nebula or graceful warp trail written across space…

And he knows he’s utterly, utterly lost when he’s quoting _Wuthering Heights_  to himself in the most ridiculously mundane situations like over breakfast where he catches himself looking into Spock's wondrous Elizabeth Bennet eyes as they eat toast and thinking _“He's more myself than I am. Whatever our souls are made of, his and mine are the same.”_  

And so, with all the practicality of someone who has never really been in love before, Jim decides, there and then in the shower that he needs a plan of action. _Either he likes me back and then enough of this tragedy and fuck all the reasons why we shouldn’t, or he doesn’t and then I’ll suck it the fuck up_ he thinks.

 _Okay, so I just have to find out if he likes me._ This is when Jim’s so far eminently logical plan hits a wall the size of the Alpha quadrant. How would he ever know if Spock was in love? Is Spock—patient, loyal, humble, _logical_ Spock—even selfish enough to really, properly be in love the way humans can be? And if he even  _was_ , would Spock think it was more logical to hide it or just say it flat out? 

 _A pox on_ _inscrutable Vulcans!_ he thinks with frustration. 

 _Okay, okay think tactics, Mr. Starship Captain_ he mentally slaps himself. 

As always when he performs this ritual, instantly, half a dozen half-baked ideas fly through his head in rapid succession. _What if I almost die and then I get him to confess when I’m half-conscious with pain meds? What if I wait for an alien aphrodisiac to conveniently hit us both at the same time forcing us to have sizzling hot sex and in the aftermath we discuss our relationship? What if I wait till we’re stranded on an ice-cold planet somehow left with only one thermal blanket and we have to share to keep warm? What if I wait for destiny to announce itself in the form of here-to-fore unknown Vulcan biology or telepathy? What if I wait for a deus ex machina plot intervention that will prevent me from having to decide anything or take any personal responsibility for my feelings? What if I tell him I like him like a normal human being?_

 _Too out there_ , he thinks as he casts this last plan aside.  

This is when he decides to call the crazy Ambassador from Delta Vega.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who doesn't know "deus ex machina" means "god in the machine" and is a literary term that refers to plot devices/higher powers that step in and save the day but are often kinda contrived like priori incantatem in the Goblet of Fire (i still <3 harry potter) or Spock's nictitating eyelid in the TOS "Operation: Annihilate!"
> 
> I also made an oblique reference to whochick's legendary fic "Leave No Soul Behind" (the "War and Peace" of K/S) which features a scene in which Spock is running on a treadmill and has the enviro settings to match those of Vulcan-that-was. That story is so important to me that I hope my borrowing, if ever discovered, is seen as the tribute that it is.


	9. Which contains a history of flirting AKA Jim works his booty like a boss and Spock notices

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please do yourself a favor and listen to Brenmar's “[Like a Boss](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uxu933O3WN8)” while you read the club scene. Your imagination will thank me (also you won't get one of the jokes without it).

When Spock was a teenager, suddenly driven out into the turbulent seas of spiking hormones incumbent upon all those who go through puberty, he’d snuck into the section of the library labeled “Pre-Surakian Romances.” He wasn’t even sure what he was looking for, only that it’s strange forbidden character, the very element of it that had always embarrassed him as child and ensured his aversion, now had the opposite effect. He was drawn to its mysterious shelves, quieter than the rest of the library—tucked away as it was in a discrete corner—yet somehow buzzing with the tense draw of illicit knowledge. 

It was in these shelves that Spock discovered the notion of romantic love. Each page turned yielded shocking new discoveries, the sacred and the profane layered side by side in ways that made his skin feel hot and tight. There were lovers fighting for one another with all their hearts blood, lovers crooning to each other with languid words that Spock had never imagined before, let alone heard out loud.

_See, the winter is passed, the rains are over and gone. Strengthen me with raisins, refresh me with apples, for I am faint with love._

When he was in school or at home with his parents or walking in the streets of Shi’Kahr sometimes the words he had fervidly read in secret would flare behind his eyelids like the flash floods of Vulcan autumn, leaving his stomach in knots and his heart beating quicker.

_The fig tree forms its early fruit; the blossoming vines spread their fragrance. Arise, come, my darling; my beautiful one, come with me. Your mouth is like the best wine. May the wine go straight to my beloved, flowing gently over lips and teeth._

Spock had been taught in school what sex was, but this was different.

_All beautiful you are, my darling; there is no flaw in you._

Sex had seemed so scientific before, like learning about the topography of Tellar or the chemical composition of an O class star. But the words he read in the library quickened his blood and awoke his mind to the possibilities of eroticism. 

_I have come into my garden, my brother, my husband; I have gathered my myrrh with my spice. I have eaten my honeycomb and my honey; I have drunk my wine and my milk. Eat and drink from me; drink your fill of love._

He wondered what it would be like to touch someone in the most intimate of places, whether it would be like the violent tenderness between the mythical lovers whose words swirled in his head.

_Place me like a seal over your heart, like a seal on your arm; for love is as strong as death, its jealousy unyielding as the grave. It burns like blazing fire, like a mighty flame._

Pon farr takes on an even more nightmarish aspect after his discoveries; not only will he lose all semblance of logic and descend into madness but he will be forced to share the most intimate of acts with a near-stranger, he will be forced to squander what opportunity he has to love on someone who may not return his passion or whom he may not be able to love and yet will be tied to them always. These thoughts drive him deeper into himself, into his desire to be a perfect Vulcan, the kind he believed would not need to ask such questions.

_I slept but my heart was awake. Listen! My beloved is knocking: “Open to me my darling, my dove, my flawless one. My head is drenched with dew, my hair with the dampness of the night.” I have taken off my robe— must I put it on again? My beloved thrust his hand through the latch-opening; my heart began to pound for him. I arose to open for my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the bolt. I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had left; he was gone._

It wasn’t something he could talk about to anyone. While he could ask any Vulcan on the street any question under the sun regarding the mechanics of sex without them batting an eye, this emotionality, this sensuality, he somehow knew to be taboo. 

_You have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes. Your lips drop sweetness as the honeycomb; milk and honey are under your tongue. I have taken off my robe— must I put it on again?_

And of course it was something he would never, ever ask his mother.

_Let him kiss me with the kisses of his mouth— for your love is more delightful than wine._

***

Jim found out about sex when he was seven. His mother was off-planet, Sam was out with friends and Frank was working so Jim had the house to himself. The magazine he had found under Sam’s bed was both horrifying and darkly intriguing. As soon as he realized what was in it (the people in it were _naked!_ ) he slammed it shut and managed to put it back exactly where he had found it (mashed between the boards of the bed frame and boxspring) and hightailed it out of there. 

But what he had seen niggled at him. The next time he was alone in the house he went back and looked at it again, this time for longer, gradually accustoming himself to the shock. What he discovered there he used to his advantage at school, making it seem like he knew more about sex than he did, explaining how it worked to the other children on the playground—his descriptions embellished by a keen sense of showmanship. (“Well you know, two girls and a boy can do it at once! Or two boys and a girl! They just use their tongues instead and it’s called a ménage à trois!)

Somehow, Jim’s reputation for being sexually advanced stuck around even when the ill-gotten knowledge he’d derived from his brothers magazines became anachronistic compared to the secondhand tales of the debauched exploits of older siblings that started to be passed around in whispered voices. Maybe it was his good looks or his confidence-bordering-on-arrogance, but by the time he was in high school he became a classic case of reputation-as-destinty— his first encounter with the self-fulfilling prophecies of what other people think about you.

And so he was fourteen and too young when he lost his virginity. It happened with a clumsy mutual hand-job from Becky Cartwright behind the school—in between the wall and a concealing row of old elm trees that the kids had called “lovers lane” because it had been the sight of many such precocious de-flowerings. 

She was sixteen and it wasn’t her first time and they’d been dating for two weeks, but it seemed like something he was supposed to do, his kisses still sloppy and inexperienced as he’d tasted her mint chapstick, her long hair in his face as he came. 

They’d broken up soon after that for some reason—the first in a long string of inexplicably short-lived relationships. Nowadays Jim suspects that this pattern arose as a subconscious mirroring of his mothers own dating habits or perhaps a self-defense mechanism derived from his feelings about his fathers absence ( _Whatever, Freud_ ). 

Whatever the reason, people always thought Jim knew about sex, and so by the time he was enrolled in Star Fleet he was comfortable in his role as an irresponsible playboy, easy going and easy. When he’d tried that routine on Bones out of habit, the doctor had just rolled his eyes and told him straight up that it wasn’t gonna happen. Jim’s never told Bones exactly how grateful he was for that rude dismissal, but he thinks Bones can see it in the way that Jim talks to him, can be open with him about things it would be hard to tell anyone else.

***

Jim is a flirt. Spock discovered this approximately one week into their mission. Ensign Sulu had pulled off a particularly complicated maneuver through an asteroid field and, after they’d all stopped holding their breath, Jim had said into the silence “Sulu, I know you’re a busy man, but please add me to your to-do list,” and everyone had groaned and made fun of Jim’s awful pick up lines. Jim had just smiled serenely and said “There’s no need to be jealous.” Which had in turn sparked another round of groans and complaints.

Another time Spock had been having breakfast with Jim and Nyota. In the course of their conversation Jim had asked her to say something in a dialect of Romulan that Jim didn’t speak. She had acquiesced with a perfect elocution that roused a spark of professorial pride in Spock and had presumably actually aroused Jim for he had dropped his spoon into his bowl with a clank and asked to bear her children ( _most illogical_ , Spock had thought, _as he would be as incapable of that task as she would be of granting it_ ) and Nyota told him to forget about it but then proceeded to have an entire conversation with him about how beautiful and intelligent their children would be (Spock could not deny their conclusions on this matter). 

Jim flirts with Spock too. Indeed, Spock had begun cataloging every instance of Jim’s flirtations with himself even before he'd understood the implication of doing so. They were all safe in a file he keeps tucked in the back of his head, each a different flavor of pain mixed with pleasure; pain at the knowledge that Jim is only joking and intoxicating pleasure at the attention, of being included, of “horsing around” as he was never allowed to as a child.

There had been the time, back before he had known he was in love with his Captain, when they’d shared a double bed at an overbooked conference hotel on Cestus V (Ensigns Sulu and Chekov had claimed the other bed). When the four of them had arrived at their room Jim had thrown down his bag and leaped onto one of the beds, rolling around on the blankets. He’d shrieked with glee as Spock observed the spectacle and Jim had started saying things in a high feminine voice like 

“Oh Mr. Spock, is that a phaser in your pocket? Oh please don’t put your pointy eared babies in me! Please!” and “I’ll take you to my leader, just don’t turn me into your telepathic sex slave!” Sulu and Chekov had been bent double with laughter and so Spock had been forced to take action by nerve pinching the esteemed Captain and then (with the help of Sulu and Chekov) tying him up in a blanket and shutting him in the closet. When he had come to, Jim had complained as only a younger sibling can.

“Let me out guys, this isn’t funny!” Jim had whined.

“On the contrary Captain, I find this to be a most humorous state of affairs,” Spock had said from his position on the bed where he and the two Ensigns were watching a nature show.  

“Come on Spock I was kidding! Please let me out!” Jim had then tried wheedling, bargaining and threatening until at last Spock had relented.

“Do you promise to cease pretending to be an obnoxious female?”

“I promise,” came the weak voice from inside the closet.

“Do you promise to stay on your half of the bed?” 

“I promise,” came the still more dejected reply.

“Do you promise to do all of my paperwork for the next month?”

“I pro— Hey!” _Well, it was worth a try_ , thought Spock as he opened the door and the Captain (predictably) fell out onto his face from which place he sullenly rolled into a position where he could see the TV, somehow managing to glare at Spock as he went.

Another of Jim’s greatest flirting hits (also before Spock had realized the nature of his affection) had occurred after Spock had carried him, wounded, back from an away mission to sickbay. When Jim had woken up he had (presumably out of gratitude) sung Spock several bars of a song that Spock was not familiar with, but that made Nurse Chapel (who was at that moment checking Jim’s bio signs) say “I didn’t know you liked Katy Perry Captain!” 

Spock had found the lyrics to be utterly ridiculous but strangely compelling. 

When Dr. McCoy had come into the room to hear Jim serenading Spock with  “You're from a whole other world, a different dimension! You open my eyes and I'm ready to go, lead me into the light! Kiss me, k-k-kiss me! Boy, you're an alien..” with more enthusiasm then talent the McCoy had said 

[ ](https://www.flickr.com/photos/161542031@N07/48253620427/in/dateposted-public/)

“Quit hitting on Spock, you nymphomaniac!” To which Jim, still boozy with pain medication had unwisely replied “Make me!” leading to a short but violent skirmish which ended with McCoy successfully jabbing the Captain with a hypo and the latter drifting off to sleep with a slurred “But I like aliens…”

Later that evening, alone in his quarters, Spock had surreptitiously listened to the rest of the song. While he decided that it was as ill-conceived as it was poorly written, his conclusions did not stop him from listening to it several more times. This incident, among others, may have contributed to his realization of his own feelings.

And of course there was the time— well after he’d understood what the strange pull he felt towards the Captain meant—when he’d beamed down to consult Jim on ships business while he was at a club on Nimbus II. He hadn’t been able to hear Spock over the communicator, so Spock had taken it upon himself to track Jim down (i.e. Spock had deftly rationalized his desire to be close to Jim as often as possible). Spock had spotted him at the bar, his broad back a familiarly welcome sight in the din of the club. He’d walked up to Jim and tapped him on the shoulder. Jim had turned around in his seat, blue eyes glinting with meaning as he'd looked at Spock. 

_You have stolen my heart with one glance of your eyes._

“Hey stranger, is it hot in here or is it just you?” he’d said with a grin that made Spock’s heart flutter.

_My beloved is knocking: “Open to me my darling, my dove, my flawless one."_

“Captain, I see your pick-up lines are as atrocious as ever,” he’d responded smoothly, while a tiny part of him was screaming out for him to _go along with it you block-headed fool!_

_My heart began to pound for him. I arose to open for my beloved, and my hands dripped with myrrh, my fingers with flowing myrrh, on the handles of the bolt._

Sometimes Spock still thinks back to that moment and wonders what would have happened if he’d said _No stranger, I believe it’s just you_. 

After he’d asked the Captain his question (on the matter of the strange space barnacles that the _Enterprise_ had picked up at their last port of call), he’d watched as Jim was pulled onto to the dance floor where he and Nyota had danced provocatively to a song dedicated to the gluteus maximus. At one point, Nyota had bent the Captain over and mimed performing a sex act on him while Jim had laughed and laughed while continuing to “work his booty like a boss” as the title of the song suggested at which point Spock had become no longer able to maintain a non-erect status and had thus taken his leave.  

Spock can neither confirm nor deny whether or not—after hastily beaming back aboard the _Enterprise_ and beating an even hastier retreat to his quarters—he touched himself, trying to think of nothing at all. Or rather, he will never, ever admit to it if queried.

Be this as it may, the twin facts that Jim is a flirt and that Jim flirts with _him_ have been constants on his time aboard the _Enterprise_ and so when one of these two facts ceases to be true Spock notices almost instantly.

_I opened for my beloved, but my beloved had left; he was gone._

***

Okay, Jim is in over his cute curly blonde head. He’d commed the Ambassador as soon as his break time corresponded with an appropriate o’clock on New Vulcan (he didn’t want to wake up an old man in the middle of the night okay? He’s got _some_ manners). Despite his manners, he’d known he’d have to be fast, ruthless and ever so slightly devious if was going to get an answer out of someone who had taken a vow of non-interference. So almost before the image of the old Spock had resolved itself he was asking

“Were you and your Jim ever lovers?” It turns out that maybe he should have called in the middle of the night when the dude was disoriented because all he gets is a raised eyebrow and a calm intonation.

“How nice of you to call Jim. As you know I have taken a vow not to intercede in your timeline more than I have already. Giving you such information would, I believe, be a rather egregious form of intercession.” _Damnit Spock’s a stubborn bitch in every universe, this is gonna be like pulling teeth._

“But _why_ won’t you intercede? I know now that universe ending paradoxes have nothing to do with it,” he says stubbornly.

“Jim,” says the ever patient Vulcan-from-another-universe. “You know very well why I cannot tell you. It is for the same reason that I did not accompany you aboard the _Enterprise._ I will not rob you of discoveries you must make on your own. Surely as an explorer you understand this.” Jim is starting to see his point which is a certain sign he’s about to lose yet another argument to Spock so he plays his last best card out of desperation.

“But what if I want to be robbed? So much has gone wrong in this universe that shouldn’t have. I lost my dad, and Spock lost his planet, and we both lost our mothers in a way and I'll never be as good as I was in that other universe and he'll never get over it because he thinks it’s his fault just like you do!” He says searching Spock’s face for some reaction, any reaction. “So why can’t you tell me this one thing that might make this sad shitstain of a universe just a little better?” Jim says, almost shouting, feeling witless and alone. He watches as the older Spock sighs, closing his eternally wise eyes and Jim knows his last push wasn’t enough.

“Jim, my telling you or not telling you what was in another universe will not help you. Such knowledge would only torment you either as something that you desire but may never have or as a continual doubt as to whether what you feel is important because it did not occur in every universe. While I desire to ease your pain I know that anything I tell you will only add to it.”

“Can’t you give me anything?” Jim pleads brokenly, knowing he’s lost. “Please?” The look Spock gives him, beautiful eyes overflowing with love and compassion is the only answer he gets.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone who's wondering about the lines of poetry that Spock reads illicitly: I didn't write them. They're from "Song of Solomon" out of the Bibles old testament (shockingly sexy right? well there's more where that came from so if you thought it was as beautiful as I think it is you can check out the Songs online).
> 
> Also, I've really enjoyed talking to you guys in the comments sections. I've loved talking with you about our thoughts on Spock and fan fiction in general so thank you.


	10. Interlude: "Best use of a biblical quote in a K/S fic award"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much PrarieDawn for awarding me "best use of a biblical quote in a K/S fic"! 
> 
> For some reason this comment tickled me so much (the high contrast between K/S and the Bible and yet the sacrednesses they both share), so I created my own fanart of such an award were it to actually exist.


	11. Which is the penultimate chapter

Well okay, so he’d tried for old-Spock ex machina, but it looked like that was nothing doing.

So it seemed like maybe he’d have to go the “normal person route.” The problem with that is, as stated previously, Jim is _in over his fucking_ _head_. He doesn’t know how to do this. He may know everything about how to be dumb and charming enough to pick someone up at a bar or how to navigate the give and take of sex but this is another beast entirely.

How do you tell someone that you love that you love them? Jim imagines looking up at Spock over a chess game and saying _I love you Spock_ and it’s the most terrifying thing he’s ever had in his head. What if it makes Spock hate him for being greedy and depraved or what if it spoils their friendship with awkwardness or what if Spock thinks he’s joking and brushes it off? _Oh God,_ he couldn't bear it.

There had been that one time, when he’d almost said it at that bar on Nimbus II, when Spock had come down to see him. He’d been sitting at the bar watching Spock approach in a reflection; a willowy silhouette stretched and tossed by roller waves in the glass. 

He’d anticipated the tap on his shoulder before he’d felt it and wasn’t even sure he’d waited long enough to turn around, but then he was looking into Spock’s face, into his beautiful solemn, everything-beautiful-in-the-universe eyes and he’d said 

“Hey stranger, is it hot in here or is it just you?” because he’s an idiot and all he knows how to do is flirt and not say what he actually means. It was different from all the other times he’d flirted with Spock though because really what he’d meant to say was _“I love you.”_  

All the other times he’d said similar things ( _set phasers to stunning because you look hot, beam me up hottie!_ ) he’d just been horsing around, trying to get a rise out of Spock (sometimes that'd worked too well).

But this time he had actually _meant_ it, was hoping Spock would go along with it, would look at him and say _“No, it’s just you,”_  but really be saying _“I know, and I love you too Jim.”_   

But Spock had joked back and the moment had passed and Jim had gone off to dance with Uhura, and when he’d looked back at the bar, Spock was gone.

How does it happen in novels? Elizabeth falls in love with Mr. Darcy when she realizes that he'll make her laugh more as a good man than as a bad one. Jane Eyre and  Mr. Rochester only marry after they've gotten over the dramatics of a not one, but two fires, a secret wife and twenty years of emotional repression. Meanwhile Estella and Pip don’t even end up together and you can forget about _Wuthering Heights_ because Cathy dies and Heathcliff begs her ghost to drive him mad. So, no, he doesn’t have the best role models.

He wants to run away but he can’t because it’s his job to be captain and that means seeing Spock everyday. He wants to tell someone but it feels too big and ineffable to tell Bones or Uhura. He wants to do the right thing, but for so long now Spock has been his conscience and this is something he can’t ask Spock about ( _well, not without letting the cat out of the bag_ ).

On the one hand he wants to shout “ _I love you! I’ll love you forever Spock!”_ as loud as he can from the top of the tallest cliff in the galaxy; to light the biggest goddamn bonfire the world has ever seen and spell it out in smoke signals a mile high; to whisper it over and over again to Spock in the dark; to harness thirty mile lighting and fucking _electrocute_ the bastard— 

and on the other hand he’s somehow able to go on day after day saying nothing, with that shout, that bonfire, that whisper, that lighting of feeling kept trapped inside.

So in the end, Jim is just like everyone else. He doesn’t come up with a brilliant plan that somehow relieves him of the responsibility of making a choice. Instead, what mostly results from his intense self-questioning and his encounter with the Ambassador is that he stops flirting with Spock. Now that he's being honest, it hurts too much every time Spock shoots him down, even though it’s only a joke. 

If he's going to try his luck at something so important, he can’t go on treating his feelings like a parody.

***

Spock is sitting in his quarters trying to meditate. It is currently 1900 hours.

When Jim stoped flirting with him exactly two weeks ago— stopped the casual touches, the sly grins, the overt and ironic declarations— Spock didn’t know how to feel. He should be grateful—grateful that Jim no longer suggests the possibility of love between them only by mocking it; grateful that he no longer has to endure the vexatious spikes of painful hope that shoot through his chest whenever Jim makes a double entendre or gives him his flirtiest smile. And yet Spock is more confused than ever.

He tries to picture a strong wind blowing his clouded emotions away but they swirl back and reform into new and continually more troubling permutations and questions that he can’t answer.

 _Why has Jim stopped flirting with him? Why did he do it in the first place?_ Spock considers Jim’s motivations for flirting, and comes to the conclusion that Jim flirts with everyone as both a pleasant, but entirely facetious form of joking, of setting others at ease. . . while also perhaps, as a way of “casting a broad net,” to ensure that sexual relations with any given individual are not out of the question, if not now than in the future. 

Spock had always thought the former, platonic motive to be the primary reason for Jim’s flirtations with himself and it is only now that Jim has stopped flirting with him that Spock realizes that this assumption might not have been true.

Whatever the case, Jim has decided to stop flirting with Spock, _Ergo_ , Spock thinks, this must mean either that Jim no longer desires to set him at ease, to joke with him, to treat him as a friend, or that Jim no longer views him as a possible partner for sexual intercourse. 

The first conclusion is intolerable, the second hardly less so:

Spock had thought before that he was grateful to Jim for never sleeping with him— for never taking his love so lightly so as to use it for his own gratification only. 

Now Spock realizes that his former feeling could not have been true gratitude— that it must have been alloyed with a strangled, misplaced hope that Jim might someday love him, for all that he feels now is a dreadful bitterness. He wishes that he had been weak, that he had given in to Jim’s flirting, that he had at any time hinted at the possibility that he might be open to such relations. Because he realizes now, with horror, that he never had. And only now when it was too late does he realize that it was foolish to believe Jim somehow knew how he loved him just because Spock wanted him to know.

In short, Spock is in way over his glossy bowl-cut head. He was raised to calculate trajectories and divine chemical mechanisms, not to become entangled by his own feelings. Nowhere had his education on Vulcan prepared him for this skein of emotion that’s tangled about him like marionette strings.

With Nyota it had been logical. She was attracted to him mentally and physically as he was to her and they had enjoyed each others company. 

If only that had been love. Spock had wanted it to be— his early adolescent dreams set pragmatically aside— for nowhere in their relationship had there ever been this crush of feelings too powerful to contain quiescently and yet too powerful to speak of. 

What he had with Nyota _had_ been love of course. The only problem was that it was not the whole of love. Love was not always so logical. Sometimes it was a heated glance saying _“duck in three seconds or you’re going to get the shot I’ll be aiming at the guard holding you,”_ sometimes it was an idiotic man walking onto the bridge and saying _“set phasers to stunning, because you all look so hot!”_ sometimes it was the compassion of an apology that few others would have believed he, the emotionless Vulcan needed, or the gratitude in blue eyes whenever you tell him he’s wrong. 

He opens his eyes and notices a dust mote gently swirling through a beam of artificial light. _It's beautiful_ , his unguarded mind supplies. Maybe, some of its atoms are remnants of Vulcan-that-was, he thinks, flowing through the universe, on their way to somewhere new.

Jim has asked him to play chess that night at 2030 hours. 

What should he do? It’s a decision that rests on a knifes edge. Though not prone to figures of speech, Spock finds this one particularly appropriate. _Should I tell him and risk a friendship worth too much to risk? And yet he is worth risking everything for. It's another kind of[Pascal's Wager](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pascal%27s_Wager),_  he supposes. And so, under the auspice of probability theory, Spock thinks, _Although I am not a gambling man, Jim is. Maybe for him, I can cast this die._

 _No, not a gamble,_ he thinks. _An act of faith._

_***_

They're playing chess just like so many other nights. Jim's trying to figure out what Spock's up to; his strategy seems deceptively simple—so Jim knows something's up behind the dark eyes that he searches for a clue.

He's written Spock a letter. It's in the pocket of his flannel and he can feel it burn like an ember against his heart. Fear is just another enemy to be defeated he tells himself. _And I don't believe in no-win scenarios._

_***_

_Cast out fear,_ Spock thinks as he places two fingers on the back of Jim's hand (the fingers of his other hand hidden under the table and crossed for the luck Jim makes him believe in). _The only_ _thing better than wining is_ _not to fight at all, but I have slain monsters before._

_***_

And there it is—Spock meets his eyes and pushes his queen into one of Jim's pawns attacking squares. For a moment Jim is confused. Why would Spock put himself in such a vulnerable position for no benefit that Jim can see?

And then he feels the two fingers on the back of his hand and— _oh!_

_***_

As Jim meets his eyes, a color like the eternal blue skies of Vulcan-that-was, as Spock watches the shift in those eyes, as he feels it through the tips of his fingers. . . it's like a shout, like the sun coming out from behind a mountain, like a blazing fire or a mighty flame, like a still calm voice in the dark, like being struck by lighting a thousand times. Spock feels ripped asunder and anchored all the same.

***

Spock jerks and Jim feels a tug at his heart as though it's bound to the corresponding place in Spock's side, and he's standing, and he's around the chessboard, and he's on his knees in front of Spock.

And Spock's hands touch his face and his tiny smile is like the sun and Jim kisses his mouth, his perfect mouth and  _fuck, am I crying?_ Jim will deny it, if asked.

"Jim." Spock says like it's an answer and then Spock kisses him, two fingers on his cheek, on his lips, and he feels it _everywhere_ , and Jim kisses Spock's fingers, his eyes on Spock, his hand over Spock's heart like Spock's is over his.

He pulls the letter from his pocket and reads the first line in a whisper.

"I've loved you for so long," his forehead pressed to Spock's, his body between Spock's legs. 

"As I you," Spock answers, eyes closed, gripping Jim's shoulder fiercely. 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Pascal's Wager is a sort of theological proposition posited by the famous mathematician Blaise Pascal (Pascal's triangle anyone?). If you remember your high school maths you'll know that probability theory can be used to calculate gambling odds—an idea which Pascal applied to whether one should believe in God. In short, he mathematically worked out that it's always better to believe because the "pot" is eternity, so no matter the odds it's always worth it. Anyway, although this Spock is not religious in a traditional sense, I think the idea would appeal to him because it's an example of applying math to life to find answers and I hope that regardless of your religiousbeliefs or lackthereof you'll think the idea is cool.


	12. Which is a brave new world

"I've loved you for so long," Jim says, his forehead pressed to Spock's, his body between Spock's legs. 

"As I you," Spock answers, eyes closed, gripping Jim's shoulder fiercely. 

***

It’s like a game Spock thinks. The touches and the pushing and pulling so much like the wrestling or “rough housing” that humans so often take part in, only with different motive. Spock is excited, confused, and almost overwhelmed— not entirely sure what the intent or the rules of their activity are but wanting, _needing,_ to keep doing whatever it is they are doing.

***

Spock is eager but, Jim notices, quite inexperienced. His movements are too fast and too slow, too insistent and too hesitant. He doesn’t know how to position his face or where to put his legs, his knees, his knobby elbows. 

It’s wonderful, Jim thinks. However, when Spock slides a hand down to Jim's inner thigh he needs to ask

“Spock have you ever done this before?” in an unexpectedly breathy voice. He’s not even sure what _this_ is, not sure what Spock wants, only that finally, finally, finally he’s allowed to _touch_. 

Spock’s hands slow and he looks up at Jim. Underneath him Spock’s face is green and his eyes are huge and almost entirely black.

“No,” Spock says, ducking his face a little. _We should talk about this_ cautions one half of Jim’s mind while the other intones the familiar chant of _don't stop, don't stop, don't stop._

Reluctantly, Jim starts to sit up, and move away from where his legs are straddling Spock’s abdomen on the bed. But before he can move, he feels strong hands on his arms holding him in place and feels as Spock's abdominal muscles clench, Spock stretching his neck upward to reach his mouth. Jim’s eyes flutter, his heart gasping as Spock eases back down. 

“Later,” Spock says.

“But—“ Jim tries to protest, not even sure how he’s going to finish that sentence.

“Don't stop,” Spock says, looking up into Jim’s eyes with a slight smile on his lips that makes Jim’s heart beat like a war drum. 

“Okay.”

***

It is different than Spock expected—both quicker and slower than in his imaginings, happening in fits and starts, images and feelings that even Spock’s usually perfect memory finds difficult to catalogue: his own eyes widening in shock as Jim’s hand brushes a sensitive place, Jim’s soft tongue moving up his wrist his eyes never leaving Spock's, Jim laughing against his stomach as Spock gasps, Jim giggling as he says “you taste like rhubarb!” Jim’s pupils like new moons as he asks _“Like that?”_ his own back arching, his hands grasping the sheets for something to hold onto, finding Jim’s hands, of moving together, of crying out— of Jim beneath him, his face flushed and tilted back, one of Spock’s hands gently around his throat, Jim crying out, of seeing stars shudder and tumble from the sky as he. . .

***

It’s not strange, Jim thinks in the boozy afterglow as he lies in Spock’s arms falling asleep, how easy it feels—like they’ve done this before, even as every touch is its own brave new world— because in a way, they’ve been practicing this— this dance, this moving together and around each other since they first met. 

***

Spock wakes to the obscene blare of Jim’s alarm going off the next morning. Automatically, Spock stirs, trying to sit up and orient himself. Even as he tries, he feels an arm sling over him. 

“Believe me, love, it was the nightingale,” Jim murmurs sleepily. Spock can’t help the almost giddy smile that passes across his face.

“It was the lark, the herald of the morn, no nightingale,” Spock murmurs in response, even as his hands move over Jim’s warm chest and thighs. “If I had known that you would quote Shakespeare I might have been moved to precipitate this change in our relationship sooner.” 

“Liar,” Jim huffs as he kisses Spock on the mouth, slow and soft.

***

They’re lying together, closer than their own skins and Jim catches himself thinking, joyfully and nonsensically that _this, right here— it's the happiest, wisest, most reasonable end!_ Spock’s head shifts beside him, lifting off the pillow in inquiry. 

“Jim, did you just quote _Pride and Prejudice_?” Spock asks in an amused voice. 

“You got that?” Jim asks unnecessarily and Spock lifts an eyebrow in confirmation as if to say _touch telepath remember? and I'm touching you everywhere._

“If I said yes would you be okay with it?” Jim rejoins.

“[Only if gratitude and esteem are good foundations of affection](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/429059-if-gratitude-and-esteem-are-good-foundations-of-affection-elizabeth-s),” Spock says, and Jim’s eyes widen as he feels a burst of Spock’s inner laughter flow in through his skin, and _yes, that's true, that's exactly how he feels_. 

“I _have_ always thought that you've got Elizabeth Bennett eyes,” Jim says teasingly, watching Spock’s nostrils flare and feeling a snippet of Spock’s indignation.

“If either of us were a fictional literary character, namely Ms. Bennett, her role in our relationship would most certainly be yours Captain,” Spock says in a huff. Jim laughs.

“Granted,” he says, still giggling and burrowing into Spock’s chest. “[I am happier even than Jane; she only smiles, I laugh.](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/61406-i-am-the-happiest-creature-in-the-world-perhaps-other)” His face in Spock’s chest as it is, he does not see [the expression of heartfelt delight diffused over Spock’s face](https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/273032-had-elizabeth-been-able-to-encounter-his-eye-she-might), but he feels it seep through his skin like sunlight.

***

Later they are on the bridge, just having beamed up Eminiar VII, and preparing to leave orbit, their hearts still pounding with adrenaline and the thrill of having saved millions of lives and the future of two civilizations. Spock meets Jim’s eyes across the bridge and thinks _Together we_ _have helped ensure that two planets_ _will not be destroyed as Vulcan was. All hail the crew of the Enterprise, doers of brave deeds of courage and renown!_

“Captain," he says archly, with the tiniest curl of his mouth and eyes that say _what I'm really saying is I_ _love you_ , "you almost make me believe in luck.”

“Why, Mr. Spock,” Jim says in his mock captain voice, laughing and his gaze suggesting a million pure and impure things, branding Spock with their obvious love. “You almost make me believe in miracles.” 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow! I can't believe it—my first real fan fiction! Thank you so much for all your support. I've loved talking to y'all in the comments section and hearing your feedback. 
> 
> Live long and prosper kind readers.


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